


Lifeblood

by dinbird



Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Last of The Jedi Series - Jude Watson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Death, Gen, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 03:03:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9301214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinbird/pseuds/dinbird
Summary: He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe, but he does it anyway, because he’s alive and he has to go on living, and he needs her, and he has to tell her.





	

His hands are shaking so badly he can barely pull up her contact information on his phone. There are faint red streaks across the screen from his fingers but he can hardly see them, can’t really see his phone at all. Everything is a blur. He feels like he’s choking.

Touching the little green icon, he lifts the phone to his ear, wraps his other arm around himself, and closes his eyes as he listens to the ring tones. He can’t even think about the fact that she might not pick up. That she might be busy. That maybe her phone’s turned off.

But then he hears the little scratch that means he’s connected, and he waits the half second it takes for her to say, “Hey, what’s up?” in the same casual, almost dismissively affectionate tone he’s always known her to use with him.

And it really hits him when he hears that. That she doesn’t know. That he has to _tell_ her.

He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe, but he does it anyway, because he’s alive and he has to go on living, and he needs her, and he has to tell her.

When he doesn’t answer her for another second, she shifts gears immediately. “Ferus?”

He wants to cry.

“I --” he manages, just about, voice thick and scratchy and broken, but he takes a deep breath and tries to speak clearly before she can ask him anything, “I need you to come home.”

She’s moving. He can tell on the sound of her boots hitting the floor. He loves her.

“What happened?”

He can’t answer that. He can’t. He’s staring at the ugly ceiling of the police station and he’s not seeing the fluorescent lights up there, either. Only blurs. Faded colours.

“Please just come”, he says, having to bite back a sob, and he presses his fingers into his eyes, shaking, shaking so much, like he’s cold.

“I’m on my way, Ferus”, she says, voice brisk but trying to be soothing, the use of his name a little grounding, like she intends it. “Just tell me where to go. Alright?”

“I-I’ll text you.”

“Okay.”

He can tell she wants him to stay on the phone with her but it’s all too much for him, and she needs to work out how to get back anyway – Ferus isn’t even sure which state she’s in, but it doesn’t matter, because he trusts her when she says she’s on her way, knows it means she’ll be there as soon as possible. He knows it might be hours, despite that. He tells himself he can make it a few more hours if he has to.

The wallpaper is ugly and kind of matted after so many years of barely holding onto the walls, and Ferus leans heavily against it and slides down to sit on the floor, taking several deep breaths with his head buried in arms crossed over his knees.

He has to sit for several moments like that. The sounds around him are all distant background noise – the hum of the electronics, the tapping on keyboards through the thin walls, voices in the waiting room.

Honestly, he’s not sure where he is exactly. Or, more accurately, he knows perfectly well which station this is and where it is in town, but he’s not sure what kind of room this is. It’s bland, nondescript. And after he’d said that no, he didn’t want a ride home and yes, he wanted to give his statement as soon as possible, they’d taken him here. A soft-spoken officer had asked if he was alright to wait for a while. She’d given him a new shirt and carefully collected the one he’d been wearing in one of those evidence bags.

He’s avoiding looking at his jeans because they’re stained, and there’s flaky dried blood on his hands. After taking pictures and samples they’d let him wash his hands and face, but his hands had been shaking then too, and there’s still streaks of dry brown on his skin.

It’s been less than an hour since that blood was warm. Ferus knows distantly that they’ll want the rest of his clothes soon, that they’ll be taking him somewhere else, that probably the officer will be back to gently talk him through what happened while it’s still fresh in his mind. And he wants to tell them. He’ll tell them anything he can think of that will help. But telling people he knows, that are close to him … people that love Roan …

The words just lodge in his throat and he can’t breathe past them. It’s made too real. Too much.

But he knows he has to call Wil.

It takes him a few minutes to work up the strength to lift his head. To readjust the grip on his phone and to look at the screen again. He digs his other hand into his hair, drawing in one shaky breath after another as he slowly scrolls down to Wil’s name in his contact list and feels a twist in his gut at the laughing smile he sees on the contact image. He hesitates for what feels like a long time, but then finally taps the symbol to dial and presses the phone to his ear with another sob.

He realizes as the signals go through that he can’t tell Wil. Not yet. Because he needs him, and Wil would break over this. And maybe it’s an excuse he gives himself, but Ferus isn’t up for self-reflection when his world is lying in sharp shattered pieces around his feet, and he has no time to anyway because Wil picks up on the third ring.

“Yeah, Wil?” he says, in the shorthand he always uses for _this is Wil, what’s up?_

Ferus freezes up momentarily, but then makes himself say, “I need a favour”, because even _attempting_ small talk or normalcy would make his grip on himself slip.

Wil isn’t fooled for a second. He’s on alert right away. “Sure”, he says slowly. “Ferus, what’s going on? Are you okay?”

Ferus ignores the questions. “I don’t know when I- it’s- Trever, could you …?”

There’s a pause, then a shuffling sound, and Ferus has to hold back tears again when Wil asks, “he’s at your place?”

“Y-yeah. It’s just for a day, tops. I’m sorry”, Ferus says vaguely, hearing his own voice fading.

“Don’t worry about it. But you have to tell me what’s happening.”

“I will.” He says it, and he’s choking on it. “I’ll call you again. Sorry”, he repeats, and hangs up despite the half formed protest he can hear.

He can’t do this. Can’t do this.

Yet somehow he navigates to his text messages and he presses Trever’s name in that list and he slowly types out, _Not coming home tonight. Wil is picking you up. Call you later._ And he sends it.

Swallowing against the anxiety and pain and nausea in his throat, he then sends a short text to Siri: _Ussan police dept._

And then he drops his phone in his lap and buries his face in his hands, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. The world is spinning. Those shards, rising up and spinning.

He can practically hear Roan’s voice, the fond concern he’d use right in his ear, _get some sleep, you’re exhausted_ , and it makes Ferus’ chest tight with pain and longing. He’s hurting so badly. The blood isn’t his own, but he’s still been cut so deeply he knows he’ll never stop bleeding.

When the door opens what feels like an eternity later he actually flinches, but it’s just the soft-spoken officer who’s back, apologizing that she’s taken so long and giving him a glass of water. The rest of it, he can barely remember.

They ask him again to take him home, but the thought of going there paralyzes him. Everything does, really. Trever’s text back, _ok??_ , almost made him stop functioning. Siri’s was easier. She’d just acknowledged what he’d said and asked him to let her know if he left for somewhere else.

That’s another reason he can’t go. He’s waiting for her. And he’s telling himself that when she gets here, things will maybe start to make sense. Because no matter what he saw and did and the ways he’s put it into words for the police who put it on record, he still can’t process. Can’t believe it. It’s like the actual events are happening to someone else, but all the feelings are happening to him.

They let him stay. They say they’re going to get him in touch with a counselor. The next day, if possible. It technically is the next day at this point but Ferus doesn’t point that out. He nods numbly and he stares at his hands, the phone held like a life line. Sometimes he unlocks it just to look at the time and for something to do. For the most part though he just looks at the black blank screen. He has to save battery, is one thing. He’s not really seeing anything anyway, is the other.

There’s a missed call from Wil that he can’t actually remember not answering, and maybe that should scare him, but what scares him more is the idea of calling back.

He asked the officer if she could get in touch with Roan’s parents. The thought of doing that himself is too huge. He’ll talk to them, they’ll all need each other, but he can’t be the one to tell them. It’d probably be worse for them if he did. And Ferus feels, distantly, knows it’s probably irrational but feels it anyway, that maybe they’ll blame him.

It’s not really a leap for him to think that way since blames himself. Not completely, but if he’d just … if only …

There were things he could have done that he didn’t do.

When Siri finally gets there she looks pale with worry and concern. Ferus has no idea how he looks himself but her expression when she sees him is – knowing. And of course she’d know. It’s all there in his face. It’s a look Siri must have seen too many times before.

She touches his shoulder and he stands, steps towards her unsteadily, and she wraps her arms around him and he manages to hide his face in her shoulder even though he’s much taller than her, holding onto her maybe a little too hard to keep himself upright. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to. And after a moment of that, of just touch and connection and quiet, of seeing someone he loves for the first time since it all _happened_ , Ferus finally breaks. It starts slow but it builds inside him until he’s gasping for breath through sobs that are ripping him apart. Tears are stinging his eyes and they never seem to stop coming, and the pain in his chest is a burn that he’s sure, for a few moments _so sure_ will kill him, will burn right through him, will –

But nothing happens. Nothing happens but Siri holding him tightly and telling him in half whispers, “I’m here”.

She is.

Roan isn’t.

“I should’ve been faster”, he manages in a strangled voice once there’s air in his lungs again, “stronger – I – there was”, and she’s shushing him, a little urgently, but he has to say this now, even though he’s shaking again, “there was so much blood … they said there was nothing th – he was already –”

The word gets lost in another raw sob and he can feel the way Siri tenses at what he’s telling her. He steps back from her to scrub his hands over his face and take several deep breaths, but she follows him partway, touching his arm, like she’s scared to lose sight of him. Or maybe she knows how scared he is to lose track of her. How he’s never needed her more than this exact moment.

“It wasn’t your fault, Ferus”, she tells him quietly, almost pleading.

He wipes his tears uselessly with the back of his hand and shakes his head and gets out, “it doesn’t matter”, because it doesn’t. It really doesn’t. Roan is still gone.

Once Ferus is at least slightly holding himself together, they leave. Siri has this focused look in her eyes that Ferus has seen before, and he’s vaguely aware that she’s channeling her work persona into this, and he can’t blame her – it’s easier. It _would_ be so much easier if this wasn’t personal. But Ferus can’t pretend, not even a fraction. He was there and it’s etched into his mind. The way he’d desperately pressed his hands against Roan’s chest and told him to _just hold on_ even though his hands weren’t nearly enough to help the damage, the way Roan had weakly held onto one of his arms, coughs bringing tiny red drops to his lips, eyes growing distant even as they remained fixed on Ferus’ own.

He’d said so many things to him even though he never had the strength to speak. Ferus knows he won’t forget a single unspoken word, but worse is the way he’ll always remember seeing it happen. Seeing what it was that made Roan _Roan_ disappear. That spark of life, of laughter, love and warmth and generosity … dimming into nothing. Roan’s eyes that Ferus loves so fiercely becoming unseeing. Void. Dull.

Nothing.

He’d kissed Roan’s lips one last time and stayed with him, unmoving, until the ambulance and police got there.

It replays in his mind. Over, over again. It always will. He knows he’ll never be able to describe the horror and the visceral pain of what’s happened. He knows just as well that everyone will still be able to see it in him. He’ll never be the same.

Siri throws him glances, but she doesn’t say anything to him and she’s turned the radio off. He appreciates that. He’s beyond words at this point. Beyond anything. Everything is painful, and the few things that aren’t are just empty.

She pulls up by the house and Ferus gets out of the car as if on autopilot. The way he reaches for his keys is habitual, but then he remembers that he’s not carrying them. Siri is, because the clothes he was given don’t have pockets, and she’s the one who was just driving his car. He shivers faintly in the cold night air as he watches her lock the car and then holds out the keys to him with a questioning look, but he just looks away and steps aside. Lets her do it. It’s too – normal. To just unlock the door as if nothing’s changed.

He steps in after her. Doesn’t look at the pairs of shoes in the hallway. Doesn’t look at the pictures on the walls. But when he glances at the staircase to the second floor, he freezes.

He can’t go up there. How can he ever go up there again? Their bedroom is there. Their _bed_. Where Roan would wake up next to him every day. Where he’d throw his pillow at Ferus’ face as a playful challenge. Where he’d stretch out all languid on lazy weekend mornings only to curl up behind Ferus and press little kisses to his shoulder and the back of his neck.

He’d always been so warm. His lips had already been going cold.

Ferus stands there, afraid and anxious, breath caught in his throat again, but then Siri steps in front of him and pulls him into a hug. He closes his eyes, blocks out the images.

He remembers something different – himself uncertain and lost, and Siri taking some of that away just by giving him her crooked smile, eyes gentle, asking if he wanted to go grab a pizza.

Things had been both more simple and more complicated then, when he was a teenager. Yet for all his losses he’s never once faced something like this. Siri’s helping in her own practical way, by tugging him towards the couch, and she sits both of them down, arm around his shoulders.

She’s not normally this physically affectionate. Ferus supposes he could view it as a measurement for how bad this really is, or just stop thinking altogether and take comfort in it.

He leans on her, trying to calm down.

After a while, she asks, “Where’s Trever?”

And Ferus knows she has to ask, he doesn’t begrudge her that, but the surge of despair he feels when he hears his adopted son’s name is almost unreal.

“Wil”, he says quietly.

“Do they know?”

He shakes his head. Siri takes the phone gently from his hands – he hadn’t even realized he was still holding onto it, that his grip had tightened on it so much his hands are shaking again – and sets it on the coffee table.

“I’ll tell them in the morning”, she says.

Ferus shakes his head again. “You shouldn’t have to.”

“It’s okay. I know how.”

“This is different.” Just because she’s with the FBI, just because she’s seen this before, that she’s had to _say_ it before – it doesn’t mean this is actually similar.

“I know”, she says, and he doesn’t argue. He can’t argue. He’s too tired.

There’s another pause, he doesn’t know how long, where he just sits there and feels her next to him, her tension and mounting heartbreak. He can feel it because he imagines that’s what he would have felt like earlier.

“What about his parents?” And here, her voice wavers. Her own strength starting to crumble in the face of reality.

It comes out as a whisper when he says, “I asked the cops to.”

She nods.

For a while, that’s that.

They stay sitting in silence until the silence turns suffocating and Siri says, “you should get some sleep”, and Ferus again remembers the way Roan would say it. The way he’ll never say it again, other than in Ferus’ head. His memories.

He presses his fingers into his eyes for a second and then manages, “I can’t.”

“You can”, she says, again gently, that particular gentleness she always reserved for him and no one else, and Ferus is so grateful she’s his family. “Right here. Come on. Just lie down.”

 _That’s a lot to ask_ , he thinks. There’s no ‘just’ about it. But somehow he then does. She stays where she is, resting her head in her hand, fingers tangled in her hair, eyes pained instead of focused now as she looks into the kitchen without really seeing it.

Ferus loves her, but he has nothing he can say to her right now. The pain is too great. And Roan was right: he is exhausted.

His head in her lap, he closes his eyes after an eternity.

When he’s about to let go of this new awful world in favour of sleep, he realizes that Siri is finally crying herself.

**Author's Note:**

> A friend and I were talking about a what-if modern au where Siri lives, but Roan still dies. I was then inspired to write out Ferus' side of the whole thing, so I did! Mostly to upset said friend, because I'm a good friend like that.  
> I also have no idea what procedure is for cops to handle someone in the direct aftermath of trauma so I tried to guess for what seemed realistic. Research didn't yield much on this topic unfortunately.


End file.
